plunderpuss:I don’t know the original source. It was tagged as OccupyWallStreetNYC. I keep saying it

plunderpuss:I don’t know the original source. It was tagged as OccupyWallStreetNYC. I keep saying it, but don’t forget: the police are also the 99%, along with all other emergency response personnel.This is Captain Ray Lewis, retired, of the Philadelphia Police Department, being illegally and unecessarily arrested by the New York Police Department at an Occupation protest.  He has been an outspoken critic about the brutality of the NYPD specifically, and the US police in general.  He is not currently a police officer, and at this point, there have been no working police officers involved in the Occupation protests on the side of the Occupiers.The police are not your friends.  They are not the 99%, despite the technicalities of their socioeconomic placement (the average police officer in NY makes ~$40-80,000/year, according to Salary.com).  They willingly work for the interests of the fatted monsters we’re fighting against, and if they want to stop being called “pigs” and “nazis” and other mean words, they should consider refusing their orders to beat, tear gas, arrest, and shoot at unarmed, peaceful, and legal protesters like Captain Lewis.I’m ready to welcome any police officer who puts down his tear gas grenade launcher and crosses the thin blue line.  So far, that hasn’t happened, despite continual attempts at dialog and empathy towards the police by protesters at Oakland, New York, Portland, Denver, and other cities of police violence. I have stood in crowds and watched people telling their comrades to “stop calling them pigs” even as they were witnessing illegal arrests, even after the tear gas was launched, even as they were treating the baton and rubber bullet bruises on people who had done nothing wrong, had defended the police, had begged them to join us or at least to stop hitting us.Judging by the history of civil protest in this and other countries, it is unlikely that the police will ever join us.  They choose to brutalize.  They choose to arrest.  And they choose to enforce orders they know are both illegal and immoral.  To put it another way, you don’t pepperspray an unarmed 80-year-old woman while thinking you’re doing the lord’s work, unless you’re suffering from mental illness, or you’re an immoral swine.The legal advisor to the mayor of Oakland quit in protest a few days ago.  Then the deputy mayor quit.  If they can do it, so can the cops.  The cops, so far, choose not to. -- source link

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